Neil Young Rocks Java One
• Sun may be losing money, but it's still one cool company.
The company took its uber-cool status to another level by hosting legendary rocker Neil Young at the Java One conference.
Young was promoting his new Java-based, Blu-ray-delivered interactive media package that catalogs and illustrates 40-plus years of music and footage from his prolific career. Young described how he has been attempting to build a comprehensive, interactive archive of his music for at least 10 years, but the upcoming Anthology project only really took off with the development of Blu-ray and the Java platform. While he had earlier hoped DVDs would be able to handle a graphically dynamic presentation of his life work, the format simply could not. "Are we going to get a demo?" asked Sun CEO Jonathan Schwarz of Neil Young. The rocker, no fan of spin, replied: "We are, and it's fake, so it's going to work." So what's the best part about the project? "It's not static," Young said. "Maybe there's stuff we've missed, but we can add things because it's Java-enabled."
The Yankee Clipper
• Juniper channel chief Frank Vitagliano, a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, opened the J-Partner Summit with a quick jab at the New York Yankees, then compared the two baseball teams to Juniper and its biggest rival in the networking space.
"A first-grade teacher told her class she's a Yankees fan and asked the students to raise their hands if they, too, are Yankees fans," Vitagliano told the crowd of Juniper partners. "All of the children except for one little girl raised their hands. The teacher asked her why she didn't raise her hand and the girl said, 'I'm not a Yankees fan, I'm a Red Sox fan.' The teacher asked, 'Why are you a Red Sox fan?' The girl replied 'because my mother's a Red Sox fan and my father's a Red Sox fan, so I'm a Red Sox fan.' The teacher said, 'Well, that's not a good reason.
What if your mom was arrogant and your dad was obnoxious? What would you be then?' The girl thought for a minute and replied, 'Then I'd be a Yankees fan.'"
Vitagliano continued: "The first time I heard this story, the teacher was really a CIO and the two teams were Cisco and Juniper. You can guess who is who."
Seen And Heard
• Bob Venero, the CEO of Future Tech Enterprise, a Holbrook, N.Y.-based solution provider recently honored with a regional growth award from close partner Hewlett-Packard Co., may have been "All In" at the recent HP conference. But Venero last week also broke bread with Michael Dell, founder and CEO of a long-time channel antagonist if there ever was one. After a two-hourlong session with Dell himself, Venero is convinced the Dell's new channel initiative is more than empty rhetoric.
"We definitely were leery," said Venero, who sent Dell an e-mail with an offer to meet the legendary entrepreneur face-to- face and was excited to get a response.
"I wanted to hear from Michael their direction and commitment. And we have seen it and heard it. From one entrepreneur to another, we will go and do business together."
Venero said the Dell visit included a tour of Future Tech's 65,000-square-foot facility.
"He (Dell) is a legendary entrepreneur running a $62 billion company who responded to an e-mail from an entrepreneur of a $100 million company. That shows a certain amount of respect."
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